Research has found that there are inconsistencies and discrepancies in how investors evaluate men-led and women-led startups, in some cases, possibly driven by unconscious attitudes towards a gender. These discrepancies stem in part from evaluation processes that lack a consistent structure. This ultimately decreases the overall accuracy of evaluations and has a negative impact across the VC ecosystem: investors leave significant opportunities for returns on the table, promising startups do not receive the resources they need to scale, while society at large misses out on the impact of their innovations.
This toolkit, developed by Village Capital in partnership with IFC, the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), and academic research partners Amisha Miller and Saurabh Lall, includes two action-oriented implementation guides — one for individual and institutional investors and one for incubator and accelerator leaders. The guides focus on concrete steps and tools investors and accelerators can use in their own investment processes and programs to help foster more consistent, comprehensive, and data-driven evaluations.
Download the Guides
